A Good Sport on and Off the Squash Court

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CreditCreditLinda Goddard

By Rosalie R. Radomsky

Nov. 18, 2017

Martha Kathryn Withington and David Edmund Uprichard were married Nov. 17 at the Algonquin Club in Boston. Kate Ryan, a friend of the bride, who received a one-day solemnization certificate from the State of Massachusetts, officiated, and Anthony Stewart, a friend of the groom, participated.

The bride, 48, who goes by Marcy, is the chief financial officer of the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Conn. She graduated from Middlebury College and received an M.B.A. from Cornell.

She is the daughter of Rosanne B. Withington and Dr. Richard L. Withington of Clayton, N.Y.

Mr. Uprichard, 51, works in New York as the North American sales director of Aramex Global Solutions, a logistics and transportation organization based in Singapore. He received a Master of Arts in English language and literature, with second class honors, from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

He is the son of Aileen Maxwell of Dunblane, Scotland, and the late J. Edmund Uprichard, who lived in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

The groom’s previous marriage ended in divorce, as did the bride’s.

The couple met in November 2014 at a four-day squash tournament in Bermuda. She was a novice at the sport, though already a competitive marathon runner.

A week earlier she had run the New York City Marathon and at that point qualified for the Boston Marathon 15 consecutive times (to date, 19 times). “It was more of a social thing,” she said of squash, as was the emphasis of the tournament. “I was just hoping nobody was watching me play.’’

Mr. Uprichard, a founder of the squash tournament and a ranked squash player, approached her during a cocktail event at the Ascot restaurant in Bermuda.

“I pretty much monopolized her evening,” said Mr. Uprichard, who treated her to a Kir Royale, a Champagne drink with crème de cassis, even after finding out it was a jaw-dropping $40 a glass.

Ms. Withington said she enjoyed listening to his “cute Scottish accent” as he charmed her with tales of growing up in the French Congo, Zambia and other parts of Africa.

“You don’t meet a lot of guys who tell you about a pet monkey they grew up with in Zambia,” she said.

They appreciated each other’s athleticism and competitiveness. He was also a runner, though on a much more recreational basis, and they learned they had run some of the same races over the last 20 years, including the Scotland Run that April in New York.

After the trip to Bermuda, they sent each other flirty texts from time to time. They also met on a few occasions, including at the Yale Club in spring 2015 for a game of squash and at a party at her house in Connecticut, where she has a squash court. They returned to the Bermuda squash tournament in November 2015; they were inseparable, though still not dating.

In January 2016, Mr. Uprichard said he finally “puffed up his chest” when she told him she would be going to a gala alone hosted by the New York Flyers, her running club.

“We can’t have that,” he said, “ I should accompany you.”

Not only did she receive the Master Runner of the Year award for the third year in a row, that evening they also had their first kiss.

When he went to her house within the next couple of weeks to play squash, he could not help but notice a list of 10 requirements regarding boyfriends taped to her refrigerator.

“I had forgotten to take the list down,” said Ms. Withington, explaining that it was drawn up by her two daughters a couple of years earlier.

“Plays squash,” “no smoking” and “nice with Mama,” were easily satisfied, but “nice with kids” was put to the test two months later when he met the girls.

Her older daughter, Alex, immediately opened up a Harvard medical book to baldness, and asked what kind of baldness he had, while her other daughter, Mandy, patted his bald head.

“He was a good sport about it,” said Ms. Withington, with a laugh. “Now he’s checked all the boxes.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page ST19 of the New York edition with the headline: A Good Sport on and Off the Squash Court. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe